Students from Webster’s Corners elementary go two times a week to the Salvation Army to volunteer
By Colleen Flanagan, The Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows News
The teachable moments are an educator’s dream.
That’s how Ramin Mehrassa, the principal of Webster’s Corners elementary, views the time he spends with his students volunteering their lunch hours at the Salvation Army Ridge Meadows Ministries.
Moments like the time he said hello to a man that he used to play street hockey with as he was serving coffee to a line of people at the shelter. When one of his students asked him if he knew the disheveled man, Mehrassa explained how the man, the same age as himself, got into drugs and that’s why he needed help.
Another moment Mehrassa fondly remembers was when he was serving food with a Grade 6 student who told him she would always go home at the end of the school day and tell her mother that there was nothing in the fridge to eat. Something, she told Mehrassa, that she would never do again.
“That’s the kind of stuff you hope for them to see and understand,” said Mehrassa.
Almost every Wednesday and Friday throughout the school year a group of two and three students between Grades 4 and 7 at the school head to the Salvation Army Ridge Meadows Ministries to help in the kitchen. They make and serve the lunch-hour meal and wash the dishes afterwards.